Java configuration management client debuts at SD-West

Development managers are looking for a lot more from their change management tools than just source control, according to Rupert Richardson, product specialist at Warwick, RI - based McCabe & Associates Inc.

At the March 2004 SD West Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., McCabe introduced a new Java-enabled version of its TRUEchange client, which is designed to meet the evolving needs of development managers, he said.

"We find that people are not looking for just a source control system any more," he told ADT. "They're looking for true configuration management. They want more than 'what was the last build and what went in it.'"

"It's becoming much more advanced than simple version control," Richardson said. "Simple version control is becoming a thing or the past."

When he visits IT departments of customers for McCabe's software quality management and configuration management products, Richardson hears a litany of questions managers are asking about development and maintenance projects.

The list of questions he gets include: What changes did we add? How are we prioritizing things? Which changes are going to go into this release? Which are going into the next release? Who's working on what? Why are they working on that?

TRUEchange 3.0, built in Java to work with multiple platforms, including Windows, Unix, and Linux, was designed to help answer those questions, Richardson said. It uses change sets to capture data on work being done on a particular bug fix or enhancement and keep it in a logical group, he explained. This allows greater flexibility and provides more answers to more questions than the traditional delta systems, he argued.

In addition, he said the new product offers security features to assure that rules and procedures are followed before new code moves from testing to production, for example.